


and Demons and Dirt

by barbiehighheels



Series: A Chronicle of New Deities and Their Fledgling Hearts [2]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age II
Genre: @ god: sorry, Dom!Fenris, F/M, Fenris POV, baby steps BDSM is a good one tho, fake-deep porn, tags are an ongoing process, watch me earn this E rating
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-20
Updated: 2017-04-23
Packaged: 2018-04-27 06:31:13
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 18,211
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5037511
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/barbiehighheels/pseuds/barbiehighheels
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fenris comes home one morning to find Hawke in a little dress, cleaning his house. It is...unexpected. </p><p>(companion piece for "of Cleanliness and Godhood," Fenris POV)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Fenris pads through market stalls, but he doesn’t touch the fruit. He has seen his friends undergo a ritual when they purchase produce — they’ll pick it up, hold it in their palms, inspect for blemishes, test for bruises, and even smell it. Varric, for whatever reason, is especially circumspect. Who knew the dwarf would be so discerning on the decision of apricots?

Fenris denies himself this indulgence. To test the fruit, he would have to remove his claw-tipped gauntlets. If he attempted to grasp a ripe pear with them on, he would pierce it to pulp before he could bring it up to his nose.

And he will not remove the gauntlets. That is out of the question.

So he does not touch the fruit.

He points. With a claw-tipped finger. At the pear he thinks looks right. And the merchant will wrap it in wax, and drop it in his market sack.

That morning Isabela had come skulking around and Fenris hadn’t the patience to humor her attentions quite so early, so he’d ducked out into the back alley as she let herself in though the front.

He never locks his doors. There are dead bodies slumped on the floor. He finds it to be a deterrent for thieves.

Not pirates, however.

And so, Fenris found himself pacing the food market. Not touching the fruit. Squinting in the bright sun.

The air smells like cherries and chalk; soot and sweat.  

When enough time has passed that his skin is warm under late morning’s enthusiasm, he decides to cease his aimless wandering and return home. His hope is that his guest will have grown bored and left.

He opens the door to his home and what strikes him first is the change in smell — lemony and bright, like a well-vinegared washing solution. Then he sees the abandoned mop on the floor, and the sudsy mess on some of the stones.

“...Isabela?” he calls out. There is no answer.

He waits a moment longer, hand tensing around the straps of the market sack, ready to drop it and reach for the greatsword strapped to his back — but he doesn’t hear anything.

He sighs and moves towards the stairs, intending to go straight to his bedchamber. The bag is full of things he can eat without heating; breads and fruits and cured meats and hard, waxy cheeses. Fenris does not cook.

When he reaches the steps he hears cabinets opening and closing. He hears the random sounds of ransacking and searching.

He drops the market sack and unsheathes his sword to hold in front of him. The scattered fruit rolls on stones, and will be bruised.

He walks softly through the narrow hall leading to the ruckus emanating from the kitchen, and then, impossibly — he hears a feminine gasp. _Her_ feminine gasp. Hawke’s. She makes a similar sound under different circumstances, and that, in particular has haunted him since he last heard it. Three years ago.

When he crosses the threshold of the kitchen and looks into the room, his stomach plummets. Impossible. A daydream.

Hawke was kneeling atop his counter. In a dress. One hand was hitching up the skirts of her dress and holding them out of the way — baring the backs of her thighs — while the other hand reached for something on a high shelf.

“Hawke!” he croaks.

“Shit,” she says, and slaps a hand to the cabinet before she loses balance. She turns over one shoulder to look at him, and this is how Fenris notices the dress is too small and her chest is nearly bursting out of the low neckline. And her dress is hitched high enough that she is baring the backs of her thighs to him. A little higher, and she’d be displaying the cleft of her bottom.

There is a desire demon kneeling on his counter.

He is mistrustful of the spectre. Her every curve is singing to him. This is a siren tempting to shipwreck him. This is magic.

“What are you _doing_?” he asks. 

“I’m looking for a scrub brush,” she chirps, as if it were obvious.

“Why?”

“Because the sad mop couldn’t cut it with that floor.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m cleaning your house!”

“ _Why_?” he growls.

She looks him in the eye and keeps her face level. “Because it’s filthy, Fenris.”

His face twists into a sneer. Not a desire demon. It is Hawke, and she is only here because she is ashamed of Fenris and his living habits. Though it does not explain her choice of...costume. His unwitting eyes travel to her naked thighs once more. And admittedly, they linger.

She catches him leering and lecherous and blushes with embarrassment before she quickly faces away. Fenris feels ashamed. That was inappropriate of him.  

He sheathes his sword again. Before he can think better of it, he crosses the room. To Hawke. There is a small step-stool she has missed, and he kicks it out from under the cabinet, stands on it, and takes the scrub brush in hand. He offers it to Hawke and raises an eyebrow while looking at her, unsure of what to say.

“Oh,” Hawke says. “Thanks.”

“Hm,” he answers. He can think of nothing clever to say in response. He finds himself unable to keep looking into her eyes. The wall to the right gains his attention.

“Well!” Hawke says brightly, and hops off the counter. “I’m off, then!” She holds up the scrub brush with one hand and then pulls it away with both, tucking it away towards her hip; and it is a gesture that Fenris finds...utterly charming.

She dances off, dress skirt swishing at her shins. Her hair is freshly-washed and shining. It bounces.  

Demon or no, desire is a heartless thing. Hawke is an impossibility. Fenris wants to destroy her, because she is so bright, and he is so tired of squinting.

 

* * *

 

He paces in his bedchamber. She really is cleaning his floor. She has already rid his foyer of the tangled skeins of old cobwebs, and she has removed the corpses slumped against the wall. His security system of dead and rotting slavers are now dead and rotting in the refuse heap of the back alley. It is, Fenris thinks, an appropriate pyre — the shit pile.

He had hurried up the stairs to his room, past Hawke on all fours, thighs and backside pointing in his direction as her elbow worked and jerked and scrubbed the filthy floor. It is an image he will not soon forget.

He paces his bedchamber. His armor is gone. He wears a clean linen tunic, fitted to his frame, and tucked into the leather breeches he always wears. He feels like a fool, pacing the room. When Hawke’s elbow moved, so did her hips. And her rear followed. She cleaned and swayed. She has this...dip to her waist. An inverse curve. Fenris is desperate to wrap his hands around it.

His gauntlets remain on.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> !!!!!!
> 
> i'm so excited about this. thank you to everyone who suggested and supported it, and thank you to everyone who commented on of Cleanliness and Godhood. it means a lot to me!! i have soOO many other things, like, MONEYthings 2 b working on right now, but this is the sandbox i desperately want to play in, so
> 
> Fenris' POV is written in the present tense, unlike Hawke's. it was a conscious decision, and i hope that doesn't chafe any of y'all! it took me awhile to get a feel for how I wanted to write his voice and blahblahblah no1 cares, if you're curious i'd be happy to explain


	2. Chapter 2

**_A week prior_** —

Fenris has an overstrong sense of smell. It was Merrill who noticed first, and dragged the fact into light in the way that she so often does: wide-eyed and well-meaning, ignorant and blundering.

“Fenris, how keen is your sense of smell?”

Their party stops to stare.

He sneers. “What?”

“You always remark on the state of how things smell,” she drops her voice to a comical growl as she mimics him: “ _There is a foul wind of death emanating from this cave, the air reeks of sour ale, vomit and desperation_ —that sort of thing. Not to mention how much _scowlier_ you get whenever we go to the docks.”

Hawke turns, an interested smile curving her lips as she pays attention to them. Varric looks at Merrill as if he is a proud papa.

Hawke pushes some of the hair from her face, still smiling. “I never noticed that. You’re right, Merrill.”

Varric grins sly and slow, as he does. “Well, Broody? Does Daisy have it figured?”

Fenris, uncomfortable with the scrutiny, looks off to the side. “...It is true, yes. I do not wish to speak of it.”

He brushes past Hawke, and that was that.

It might have been an effect of the lyrium brands, but he will never know if it was a trait he possessed in his past life. He has an over-keen sense of smell. He can find scents in the air, subtleties of secrets a mile off before their truths are in plain view. He can smell armor and blood in shadows. He can smell the floral soap lingering on Hawke’s milk-and-honey-softened skin two days past her last bath. And when they visit the docks, he smells nothing but fish and salt and rot.

It is an animal trait. He hates it. He feels more beast than elf, like this. Absurd.

 

* * *

  

**_Now—_ **

Ice has a smell. Particularly enchanted ice. It has a sound, it has a texture, but it also has a smell. This is what hits Fenris first while Hawke is cleaning: the smell is sharp and hissing, a hated bitterness sitting high in his sinuses unpleasantly.

The wicked crack of enchanted ice he hears next, and while his stomach turns and lurches, he rushes downstairs. The apprentice of his former master had been a foul woman named Hadriana, and the bitch had studied ice magic with avid glee. She’d jest about choosing winter magics to match the eerie iciness of her pale blue eyes.

“Hawke! What was that?” he barks as he barrels down the stairs. He stops when he finds her kneeling on the filthy flagstones, sky-blue dress skirts spread about her. She is flushed and glowing. A normal glow. A dewy, soft, feminine glow. Not the magic kind. When she sees Fenris she sits, spreading the skirts out a bit further, and gifts him with a bright—if tight—smile. When he was a slave, Hadriana had used ice magic on him many times. It left no scars.

“Nothing!” Hawke beams up at him, obviously lying. “Everything’s fine.”

There appears to be no danger so Fenris goes to leave, the smell of enchanted ice nothing more than an invisible scar; something vaguely haunting. That is not malice in Hawke’s expression as he turns away; her eyes are tinged only with a furtive mischief.

When he returns to his bedchamber, his pacing is not resumed. There is something about Hawke kneeling before him, flushed and glowing, that has leveled Fenris.

He clicks the clawed tips of his gauntlets together, quiet and contemplative.

 

* * *

 

Moments more have passed and Hawke yet cleans, scrubbing industriously on her hands and knees. She is humming.

The sound filters up in a near-silent echo, carried and magnified by the high ceilings and the stone support beams. It is a small sound, one Fenris thinks she is unaware of, but to Fenris it sounds ethereal and beautiful. He can find an entire chorus of angels singing inside the breathless, broken songs she quietly hums as she works, and listening feels better than prayer.

He wishes to witness her hymn, and unsnaps his gauntlets before he can think better of it. They fall to the floor noisily. He darts around the room, scanning for excuses to draw him downstairs—(he spots the book she gave him long ago, that gift that led to Fenris learning to read)—because he would feel strange going down there specifically to watch her, and—(he sees a forgotten cup of tea, gone cold and stale)—worries it would make Hawke uncomfortable and want to leave. (He goes into his bathing chamber and selects a single wooden chair, rickety with age, and pins the book under his arm to carry his excuses downstairs.)

He stops on the landing—Hawke looks up. She stops humming.

Fenris continues as if she is still singing to herself, and sets his chair down on the stair landing. It is the halfway point between his bedroom and the main room. He thinks there is a certain vulgarity in the way he has _descended_ to see her; he feels more like a demon crawling up from hell pit filth to catch a glimpse of this beautiful woman’s ascendency. She is still glowing. The hair at her temples is damp with sweat, her hands are raw from scrubbing, and she sits up straight when she sees Fenris and his flimsy excuses sit on the landing. She cocks her head once; lit from behind with languid shafts of afternoon light, and her loose hair forms a halo.

Fenris takes a sip of his cold and bitter tea. He opens the book to keep his hands from shaking. Without his gauntlets on, there are too many tactile possibilities. Hawke’s breasts are nearly spilling out of her little dress, _Venhedis_ , he thinks—

Hawke slowly resumes scrubbing. She kneels forward, taking the scrub brush in hand once more, and pushes it with the absent, repetitive movement of someone _very_ distracted. She cleans the same spot over and over again.

Fenris chuckles. When she glances up, blushing, Fenris drops his chin to examine his book, feeling warmth start to rise in his own cheeks.

Hawke reaches a scorch mark on the stones and it is enough to draw her full attention again as she scrubs in earnest. The movement jostles her breasts just above where the front of the dress is pulled too taut and her backside sways from the momentum of each movement originating at her elbow, each vigorous swipe as she works the black mark clean. As Fenris stares, he feels strange and unholy. His palms are sweating.

She catches him looking this time. She looks back down at her task, face thoughtful as her movements slow. She subtly arches her back, rear lifting a slight amount as her arm dips low and makes a halfhearted swipe with the scrub brush. Caught, Fenris openly rakes his eyes over the curves of her body. Something about Hawke— _Hawke_ —on all fours, cleaning his floor, has made his throat go dry.

He can see her calculating expression and recognizes it easily—it is the same face she wears when sizing up an opponent, or when she surveys a field of battle, or when she chooses fruit at the market. It is sharp and quintessentially Hawke. And now Fenris wonders if he is the reason for it.

Without further preamble, Hawke pushes her shirtsleeves up and goes back to work. She ignores him.

He doesn’t mind. Fenris simply watches.

A few minutes pass and Fenris is grateful for her inattention because he is finding the sight before him to be increasingly enticing. She’s cleaning his floor. She’s wearing a too-tight dress and she’s cleaning his floor. There is a beautiful woman, a dangerous woman, a _mage_ , on her hands and knees, scrubbing his floor. It is a level of decadence Fenris has never envisioned for himself.

The part of him that would have been ashamed at the squalor and filth of his home—filthy enough that the Champion of Kirkwall saw fit to wash it herself—is quieted with the same reverential hush that keeps him silent and staring as she scours the tiles.

Fenris is humbled and aching.


	3. Chapter 3

When Hawke finishes, she’s reached the foot of the stairs beneath where Fenris sits. She knocks the scrub brush aside with a weary sigh, and raises one slender shoulder to wipe the sweat from her brow on her sleeve. She clenches and unclenches her hands—they must be sore—before pressing her knuckles into small of her back and _stretching_. The little buttons on her top pull taut and threaten to pop and Fenris stares, _gutted_ , at the curve her waist makes. He’s actually touched her there before. His gauntlets had been on but he’d clutched his hands just there, around her waist, just like he’d done so in fantasies. Once. Three years ago.

She has finished her exhausting task, and Fenris wants too many things more. He wants her. He wants her. He wants her. He wants her on her hands and knees. He wants her kneeling before him. He wants to clutch bare hands around her waist and to make Hawke _scream_.

He swallows, and clears his throat. He is, all at once, a sad excuse for a man. He is an ex-slave, who inconveniently recalls that he is broken. He _had_ his chance with Hawke, and he blundered it. Three years ago.

Or so he thought. Hawke is kneeling, still some distance away and staring at him expectantly, glowing and exerted. Her lips are slightly parted and red, red, red, smiling and soft—she smells like lemons and Hawke.

Fenris, sad-excuse-for-man, can find no words. Not even gratitude for her tireless chore. He manages a half-smile, awkward truths threatening to spill from his tongue and teeth, and he runs his sweaty palms down his thighs. _Fasta Vass, woman,_ he thinks. He opens his mouth, desperate to speak, but inhales dry air and dust motes. He takes another breath and outruns an unpleasant feeling: the internal hatred condemning himself for ruining his chances with Hawke _again_.

She rescues him. She is Hawke, and this is what she does. She rescues. She watches the movement of his hands as they nervously pass over his knees and then makes a decision. She matter-of-factly bunches her skirts in one hand, freeing her legs— _venhedis, those thighs_ —and with her other hand, grabs the bucket of clean water she’d been using for rinsing.

She kneels upright and raises one knee to rest on one higher step. Fenris can see the freshly-scrubbed flagstones through her spread thighs, in the negative space made between bared skin, and he wishes the space there, the throne between her thighs, could be a seat reserved for _him_. Next he thinks that if she would raise her skirts just a bit higher, he’d see where those thighs met hips and joined at the center. And he very much wanted to see that. He could intone a heaping litany of words to describe the feeling of being there, inside her—(three years ago)—but he is ashamed to admit he has never _seen_ her sex. Sad-excuse-for-man feels bestial and feral at how savage his desire for her is. Sickening. He may as well be panting.

Hawke perches the bucket on a step just below his feet, at level with her chest and next, looks up at him. Fenris forgets how to breathe. He forgets...everything.

She tilts the bucket forward and he watches the water cascading down her chest, down, down over her body. What’s left when it’s done is the dress is soaked through and the thin fabric clings, indelicate, to her skin, outlining every lush curve in great detail. The water leaves no secrets behind. Her nipples respond and raise through the blue garment, revealing her lack of breastband. She’s dripping. She’s beautiful and she’s made a mess.

“ _Whoops_ ,” she jests, soft and playful.

He sits back sharply, hissing swears in Arcanum under his breath. She shivers and stares at him, chewing on her lip. She is waiting.

Fenris. Cannot. Stop. Staring.

He knows he makes a fool of himself, gawking, and that it is his turn to act, to move, to do something—but it isn’t until Hawke shifts, knuckles clenched white-tight in her wet skirts, that he realizes _she’s self-conscious_.

His tongue is too thick to form words; if he spoke, he would only emit an unflattering croak. Instead he nods with his chin towards himself, hoping enough is made clear: _Hawke, please come here_.

She understands. She swallows and crawls forward on her hands and knees, hips swaying and sensuous. Fenris had not intended to issue a command, but Hawke behaves as if he has, and even though Fenris feels irresponsible for his graceless demand, this misunderstanding—

He has never been so alive with desire. Parts of him are pulsing. An important appendage throbs. He is seated, watching while Hawke is _crawling_. He is beyond caring about how his desire renders him mute and feral; something terrible. The wanting strips him clean.

She reaches the landing and doesn’t stand. She kneels at his feet and looks up at him, her face stark with longing. It is so bleak, so naked, that it steals his remaining breath. She really does want him, still. His heart sings. He didn’t know it could do such a thing.

More-animal-than-elf leans forward in his chair to brush Hawke’s damp hair out of her face. She is so beautiful and he is so inarticulate. She closes her eyes and leans into his touch and he is so inadequate. He is so undeserving of this. You can’t touch a sun.

He hopes the sun won’t notice his shaking hands as he paws at her, cradling her face.

She keeps her eyes shut but takes a deep breath and presses her lips together, as if preparing to say something. “Fenris, I was wondering...do you—do—” she cuts herself off and her eyes fly open with wordless apology.

Fenris tenses. He knows there is high probability that this is where he will commit ruination: if he cannot bring himself to say the correct things, what Hawke needs to hear. He’s never had a real relationship. He has never explored concepts such as “affection” and “respect.” He has barely taken steps farther than “consent,” and still, that development marks a progress that is _recent_.

“Go on,” he instructs. His voice sounds quiet and foreboding. He readies himself for hopes dashed upon the rocks. He waits for Hawke to ask something of him he cannot provide. She is whole and unbroken, and he is so incapable.

“Do you—” she stops, swallows, and shakes her head to herself. “Fenris. Do you want me to call you ‘Master’?”

Fenris shoots to his feet as the chair clatters backwards with offending volume. His lyrium brands flash fury-blue, a warning of imminent loss of elf into beast, and he grasps her upper arm to yank her upright, shocked senseless and furious. Hawke’s eyes are screwed shut and she is wincing. She was wincing before he’d hauled her to a standing, as soon as the words left her mouth. This is not insignificant to Fenris.

He is disgusted.

He is also hard as stone and throbbing in his breeches.

“Yes,” he hisses, easing his grip.  

Her eyes fly open and stare into his, widening at what they find.

“Alright,” she breathes. “I will.”

Something changes between them; something he can’t name. Maybe it is a sinister glinting of magic or enchantment he can’t understand, but the air is charged and thick with tension. Fenris feels unclean. He takes Hawke by the wrist and turns to lead her upstairs. He is repulsed by his own desire, the sheer magnitude of it. He hates himself for despoiling Hawke, and agreeing to let her participate in this filth where she calls him...that.

Hawke rescues. It’s what she does. She sees things. She is the sun that brings them into light.

He has never wanted her more. He did not know he was even capable of such a thing.

Fenris drags Hawke upstairs by the wrist, at war with himself. He knows broken beasts can’t be happy or have nice things. It is a fact. And yet—

He keeps picturing Hawke on her knees.

He is so unworthy. You can’t touch the sun. You can’t fuck a goddess. Such is the way of things.

He tightens his grip, unheeding. He keeps hearing her half-whispered and shy inquiry: _Fenris. Do you want me to call you ‘Master’?_

Fenris wants to fuck Hawke desperately; because she is so _fucking_ hot, and he is so sick of wavering. 


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tw for mention of past sexual abuse/assault.

He leads her upstairs. He can feel her hummingbird pulse thrumming in her wrist, and thus eases his grip. Her fingertips brush against his.

Some truths are seated uncomfortably within Fenris, lining his ribs, thumping their indignant inevitability and doom just behind his breastbone. He also feels a silken strand of hope, a surging sea of affection and admiration for Hawke, and...a raging erection. Hawke causes many feelings, as it happens.

These are the things he is telling himself as he brings Hawke to the bathing chamber:  _Animals can’t make love, they can only rut. Beasts are mindless beings. Wild animals_ can’t make _puppy eyes._

His motivation had been to get her a towel, because — as much as he’d like to keep staring at the outline of her figure in the wretched-tight wet dress — surely it wasn’t comfortable for her.

He lets go of her wrist and begins building up the fire, which still smoldered feebly from one he’d begun that morning. When the fire is crackling to a suitable degree, Fenris looks back to see Hawke hesitating in the doorway.

“Is something the matter?” he asks.

“No, I just...didn’t realize I smelled so foul, is all.” She says it while glancing down at her dress and idly lifting the sodden fabric from her skin. She is being petulant.

“Hawke,” Fenris says firmly.

She refuses to look up at him, sulking instead. Like a brat.

Fenris...likes it.

“ _Hawke_ ,” he says again, sounding sterner.

She looks up at him in an instant, chin tucked and still somewhat sullen. There is something about Hawke’s newfound brattiness and her state of undress that has unseated and aroused Fenris. He has to keep his expression schooled so he doesn’t smirk at her while she’s busy concentrating on pouting.

A thought — something wicked — occurs to him. Hawke has been on her hands and knees scrubbing his floors all day. She must be exhausted. Perhaps she would permit Fenris to...show his appreciation?

“You worked very hard, and I am thankful for your efforts. I hoped that I could...demonstrate some gratitude in return. If you would like,” he tells her.

“Oh.”

“You smell fine.”

She snorts.

“You do,” he insists, arching one eyebrow. He reaches for her wrist and leads her closer. “I promise. I didn’t intend to hurt your feelings.”

She chews on the inside of her bottom lip. This is her tell — observed in practice many nights over Wicked Grace at the Hanged Man — when Hawke bites her bottom lip, she’s biting her tongue. In a manner of speaking. It means there is something she isn’t saying.

When she is closer to him; closer to the hearth, she shudders. The flickering fire casts a lapping and enthused light over Hawke, and Fenris; beast, wolf, devourer, lets his eyes follow the lines of her body through the clinging-wet housedress like she is a new gift in renewed and different light. The windows of this room, facing southeast, offer none of the afternoon’s brightness and instead they are swallowed with shadows and fire glow, suffused with the dimness of the hour.

“You’re shivering,” he mutters quietly. He is still staring. He—her body— _Hawke_ —

“Well, you know. Damp damn dress would be  _my_  first suspect,” she beams through a smile of slightly chattering teeth.

He snaps to his senses and chuckles to cover his embarrassment. He’d selfishly let himself get distracted and stare while she stood there, cold and prickled in gooseflesh — and Fenris would not allow himself the inappropriate indulgence again.

He—

He is not fit to make demands of her body. He does not wish to place expectations on it. On Hawke. On the siren shivering in this room.

“Before we — are you hungry? Have you eaten?” he asks abruptly, raising his face to hers.

Her stomach growls at the mention of food and she squints one eye to wince about it. She does not ask " _Before we what?_ " 

“I thought you might've worked up an appetite. I...was returning from the market, actually, when I found you here — so I have a few things downstairs I’d forgotten about. I’ll go prepare us some lunch.” Fenris steps back, taking one last look at her. “Stay here, and get out of that dress. Towels are in the cupboard.”

“Alright…” Hawke trails off.

He hurries to leave lest his eyes linger.

Fenris can recall times in his own past when his own nakedness, at times, had rendered him nothing more than an unanswered question in Tevinter, a question which Danarius in particular had been all too eager to answer. When he was a slave, his body had been an unspoken invitation.

It is different for him in the Free Marches, in part because he makes sure of it (and cares not to waste time defining his boundaries when he can simply rip hearts from chests and be done with the interlopers), and in part because it is not as bad for him. As a man. A beast, rather. But Hawke —

She is the Champion of Kirkwall and  _still_ , without nudity, Fenris has witnessed men behave as if they have a right to her armored (and often, well- _armed_ ) body. One morning they’d been stumbling back towards Hightown from the Hanged Man, hungover after a celebratory bender following another one of her victories — and while she stopped to blearily peruse sizzling breakfast sausages at a market stall, some poor sot still tried to make a go at it with a lurid proposition for her about his, ah, sausage.

Fenris wants to be different. He wants to be respectful. He will place  _no_  expectations on Hawke. Or Hawke’s fucking perfect body,  _venhedis_.

He descends the stairs, not thinking about Hawke's body, and lying to himself about that. He pads down to the narrow hallway, clean tiles freed from grit and feeling smooth under his bare feet. He begins picking up the scattered spoils of his morning market trip; gathering up his boon of bruised fruit into his arms, and bringing it into the kitchen. He lays it all gently down onto the tall, worn butcher’s block and starts pawing around the pantry for the one decent pairing knife. He’ll cut the bruised parts out for his offering to the goddess.

He shakes his head to himself, scattering his disjointed thoughts. (Hawke is likely naked, upstairs, while sad-excuse-for-elf putters over piffle in the kitchens.) He locates a pewter serving platter. (What he wouldn’t give for the easy confidence of a drunk pervert, effortlessly able to approach Hawke over breakfast sausages.) He concentrates on his task. (Fenris would know what to do with it, that confidence. He would wear it better.)

His thumb slips behind the pairing knife blade with the subconscious ease of a skill learned long ago and practiced many times. He cuts a crisp golden apple into thin slices and lays them in immaculate array upon the platter. He could also cut the peel from the grape into the shape of a delicate rose, if he so wished. Fenris knows table settings. He knows to pour wine from the right. Mindless animal, often leashed, paraded during dinner — Fenris  _knows_  these things. He just doesn’t know  _how_  he knows. There are quite a few of these skills he carries, random, insignificant — and some of them he can’t remember ever learning, or at times, even ever having done.

For example, when he's done cutting and slicing fruit, cheese and cured meats for his offering, he takes a clean linen napkin, stiff with starch, and folds it into the shape of an embrium blossom. Without effort. He arranges the fruit prettily on the platter. His hands know how. 

He knows what part of his life these skills come from, these things he can do without having learned how. They are vestiges of the void before he was branded, the blank question of who had been snatched free when lyrium and pain robbed him of hindsight. His hands committed the memories where his mind cannot. He has a liminal memory of working things. 

He still couldn’t read, though. When he woke up on the stone slab, lyrium-scarred and snarling, he had no memories but he could braid hair and fight and fuck and suck cock and swing a sword and place proper table settings, but he couldn’t read. And Fenris knows what that means.

He’d been a slave even before he was branded.

His hands tremble as he lays the grapes. What a fool he is, performing old tricks. He is a sad, scarred dog begging for scraps of affection. He presses his knuckles into his closed eyelids until black spots bloom behind them. He blinks a few times and clears his throat, chasing away dark memories. Real memories. Ones he has made since waking up a scarred slave. Ones of ice and pain. 

He thinks of Hawke. He thinks of Hawke and it tethers him. He thinks of Hawke and it is like turning his face to the sun.  

Lunch is finished. He delves into the wine cellar and stares at the dusty racks for a new selection. Not the Aggregio — a drink too riddled with his own demons — but perhaps the Yalumba Reserve? It is dark and sweet and red and spiced and Hawke, if memory serves correctly, enjoys these qualities. 

 


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you all so much for reading and commenting! <3

He takes deep breaths as he returns upstairs with the food and wine. When Fenris enters the bathing chamber, he finds Hawke swaddled in three of his towels. One around her torso, one over her shoulders, one over her head (which hadn’t been wet…?) and one clutched her in hands. She straightens her shoulders when she sees him, daring him to laugh.

He does not dare. He smirks, and holds up a hand with the stems of two wineglasses held in the webbing of his fingers. “My lady?” he asks, teasing.

She nods and her eyes flit down as her cheeks turn slightly pink. He is desperate to know what thought just caused it.

He sets their food down on the sidetable, and uncorks the wine to pour a glass for her. She accepts silently, nodding her thanks. She is nervous, he realizes, and it is in turn making _his_ nerves flare up. There is so much suspended momentum lingering between them, and they are both quiet. There is a sea of unsaid things poised darkly on Hawke’s lips, and Fenris wants to drink them up, drop by drop.

She sips her wine. The towel around her torso is squeezed tight over her breasts, and Fenris pretends he does not notice. Despite the fact that he has. Very much so. Noticed.

He scrapes out a chair and gestures for Hawke to sit, and she does. It’s a curious action. There is only one chair and Fenris has seen Hawke-the-hero insist things such as “ _Oh, no, I prefer to stand_ ” time and time again when there is one chair in the room. He wonders why she has deferred without one word. A blacker part of his conscience wants to press fingers to edges and test her limits.

He does not listen to it. He leaves the room to retrieve the matching chair from the stair landing and return it to its rightful location at the little table in the bathing chamber. He also brings back the Book of Shartan, and on a second thought, the empty cup of tea, which would have looked odd left alone on the landing.

Fenris sits. Hawke has nibbled at some of the food in his absence but she isn’t really eating, and for a brief moment he worries he’s prepared only foods she hates, but then he recalls having seen her eat these very things, with gusto, so he knows it’s not the food. He also remembers that this is Hawke, and she eagerly devours everything — he’s seen her gleefully accept honeyed locusts grilled on a skewer or pickled cuttlefish or some other such nonsense. Hawke eats _everything_. Fenris has always found it endearing. The open-minded diet of a hero, he supposes.

Hawke removes the towels draped over her shoulders and hair and is left sitting in a single towel. She takes another small sip of wine and there — there it is — she beams at him. She gifts him with a goofy smile. He cannot help but lift a corner of his mouth in return, feeling foreignly silly and giddy in the warmth of their shared afternoon. There is a lightness to his limbs whenever she is in the room. There always has been.

She takes another sip of wine, elbows tucked to her sides to keep the towel up. She is perched on the edge of her seat, knees locked together. A savage part of Fenris wants to invoke Hawke’s brattiness with punishment.

He does not listen to it. She still isn’t eating.

“Have you, ah —” she starts, and stops when he offers her a grape.

She looks at him with surprise, which causes a flicker of nervousness to flare in his stomach at his supposition, his interruption. He’s seen Hawke hit men for less than this. (Not that she would ever hurt Fenris, but, the very notion of doing something in the slightest to displease her or injure the burgeoning burning of desire is more than enough to make Fenris think twice.)

But then she leans in and Fenris watches as the grape disappears between white teeth. He feels the quick brush of her tongue as she takes the grape. It is a small thing, the touch of the tip of her tongue to the pad of his finger — but _fasta vas_ , he feels it everywhere. It sharpens an already savage hunger and his eyes widen as he inhales, hard.

Hawke eats the grape, looking quite pleased with herself.

Fenris clears his throat. “Forgive me. What was it you wanted to ask?” His voice is husky.

“I wanted to ask if you’d read any good books lately.”

They share a smile on equal footing. Something about shared secrets acts as kindling for closeness, Fenris knows this, and he’s comfortable with Hawke. He feels no residual shame over his illiteracy. He feels shame over many other things, assuredly — including the lurid flashes his filthy mind inevitably supplies, such as, right now, imagining Hawke losing the towel and riding him astride the rickety chair where he sits —  _venhedis_ — but not illiteracy. She never made him feel ashamed for that. She has only been warm and understanding, and Fenris is proud to easily answer her inquiry. He hopes she is proud of him too.

“I have, actually.” He smiles, and leans back in his chair with the easy confidence of someone who has the right words, who is capable of answering. The confidence of a man who knows how to read. He explains his recent library acquisitions and Hawke listens intently, eyes shining with interest. She nods him along and raises her eyebrows in understanding. Marian Hawke is an _exceptional_ listener. Fenris lov—

He finishes by admitting he prefers tomes of history and science because the language is functional and precise, and easier for him, a former slave, to understand.

Hawke glosses right past it without making judgement. She nods as if this were normal, and her eyes alight on the Book of Shartan. The book she’d given him. She has just noticed its presence. Fenris quiets, studying her reaction. Would she mock his presumption for pretending to read it downstairs?

“And that one?” she asks, nodding her chin to the Book of Shartan.

If Fenris were Varric he’d have the capability to explain fully. He’d begin the winding narrative with a tale of a feral beast clutching a warm heart on a warm night in the bloodied alienage, apologizing to the warrior goddess moonlit in front of him, and he’d explain how that led to soothing the savage with a gift of a book, a confession, and how he fell in lo —

“It was...life-changing,” is all he manages.

Hawke’s breath hitches in her throat. Despite his woefully insufficient explanation, her eyes soften and grow wider and her lips part on slow and silent exhalation. She is pleased.

For a single moment, they watch each other breathe.

The blood rushes in his ears. He can feel his every heartbeat distinctly. He knows this is a moment that requires him to make the first move, to act, to grab, to fucking  _do_ something — but before he can fumble his way forward and force the moment to its crisis, Hawke stands up and whips off the towel off her body. And with that, she snatches the remaining breath out of his body.

He’s never seen Hawke naked before.

Three years ago, when they’d had their frenzied night of passion, he’d taken her against a wall. And then the stairs. And then, having reached their destination, bent over the foot of her bed. He’d rucked her robes up and pushed her smalls to the side and in their haste, they hadn’t bothered with taking any of their clothes off.

Now the sight of Hawke (walking and naked) essentially reaffirms his religion by eliminating the possibility of a world with no divinity. She is an oasis mirage in the desert, this woman. And her body, her lush and curved body, with all its amassing battle scars, serves as armature to faith for Fenris because there is _no way_ that such a figure, such a creature, such a giggle, such a listener — is simply a random summation of ancestry and spare parts and not divinely created. She is no accident. When Fenris stares at the backs of her thighs, up to her ass, he inwardly issues a terse ode to the will of the Maker. Amen.

She pads naked to the cask of bathing water, heedless of her effect on him. No matter. Fenris would be content to sit there and stare all night if she permitted. She dips a bucket into the cask and walks to the pounded copper bathtub to pour it in. And then she does it again.

And again, only this time after she pours the water in, she bends over the rim of the tub with her pert ass pointed towards Fenris.

He sucks back a sharp breath and holds it as she swirls her hands in the bathwater, testing the temperature. Fenris wants to keep her bent over the tub and fuck her from behind until they’re both gasping and insensate. He grits his teeth and swallows, stifling an inelegant groan.

Perhaps not so content to just sit and watch, then. Much better to be an active participant. Hawke seems intent on seducing him. Even if her affection for Fenris is at her detriment.

“Are you _really_ going to just watch me fill this whole tub alone?” she jokes, while straightening, arching a brow, and flicking water from her fingertips towards him.

He jumps up to assist.

As he reaches for the other bucket and fills it with water, some of Hawke’s bravado seems to leave her. Her eyes are downcast and she bites the inside of her bottom lip. They go about their task in silence.

The bathtub has industrious Dwarven fire runes rimming the bottom perimeter, and they are charged by sunlight so that the warmth wears off after some time, and doesn't run the risk of boiling or burning the bather. They are nice. This bathtub was a luxury purchase Fenris permitted himself when they returned from the Deep Roads with all their hoards of glinting coin. He’d always hated bathing in a squat wooden basin.

The room fills with curls of steam, and the subtle shift of the room’s scent expands to include damp, clean heat. The fire is vibrant and crackling, swarming the room with molten light that is alive. Hawke is naked. She’s beautiful and she’s naked and she’s going to take a bath in Fenris’s tub. In front of him.

The room ratchets up to a new level of sweltering.

She pauses for a moment to lift the hair from her neck and inhale deeply. He notices, and pauses on his way to the cask to stand close and blow a cooling breath on the back of her neck. Fenris is only a good samaritan when it comes to Hawke. He reaches a hand up as if to rest on her waist, but it hovers an inch above instead. And it hovers, untouching, because some instinct tells him, _not yet_.

He continues past as if nothing has happened and revels in the way Hawke’s chin dips to her chest and her eyes flutter shut at the mere touch of his breath. She is so _responsive_.

He remembers this from their one night together, but the reminder is delicious. He wonders of other ways to unmake her, the way she does for him. He’s hard, and aching, but his physical need is a small nuisance compared to the darker desires expanding in his chest and humming for audience. He doesn’t just want to sate his own desires on Hawke; he, the beast, the devourer, wants to unravel her. He wants her screams and squirming. He wants her under him and gasping. He wants her tied up and writhing.

When the tub is full he crosses to the little table and ignores his wine glass to grasp the fucking bottle by the neck, and tilts it up to pour down his dry throat. He wants to take the goddess off the pedestal, dust her off, and drag her down to play with him in the dirt. He wants terrible things. Too many things. He does not know if Hawke would be understanding.

He licks a lingering droplet from his lip. Hawke watches. Fenris keeps his eyes trained to her face — he will not let her see him ogling her breasts or hips or sex — he will not let her feel like she is just a body to him, the way Fenris felt in chains, she is _better_ than that, than him — 

But it doesn’t stop his periphery from picking up on the subtle sway of her full breasts as she turns to get into the tub. Hawke hisses as she clutches the sides of the tub and gingerly lowers herself into the hot water. When she is seated, she takes a deep breath, and Fenris doesn’t let his eyes drift down to the way the bathwater laps at her chest, or the way it makes her nipples raise.

The room smells like Hawke and wine and fire. Rather, it does, up until unconscious ice springs from the mage’s fingertips in response to the heat in which she sits — and the sharpness of that cold scent overtakes any other thought in Fenris’s mind. His fingers tense in an automatic anticipation of pain and he sits very still. He stares ahead, unable to enjoy the vision of beautiful woman bathing naked in his tub, and struggles to stamp out the unwelcome noise of his trauma. It is so loud, and this is not the time.

“Oh, right.” Hawke says in a strange tone when she catches his expression. “I’m sorry. It’s — honestly, I didn’t even think. I’m sorry.”

Fenris, embarrassed, mutters some curt words of forgiveness, but it doesn’t occur to him what she was apologizing for until Hawke slinks down against the back of the tub, and slips underwater. She wasn’t apologizing for ice magic and it’s significance to Fenris, she was apologizing for _using_ magic. In front of him. Because she knows he hates it. And this realization makes him feel like shit.

Hawke waits out the awkward silence from the bottom of the tub, and her breath comes floating up in bubbles. He wishes the bubbles were words. The tension thickens, and it isn’t the good kind, the electrifying kind that incites passion, it’s the stalling kind. Hawke would rather hold her breath underwater than share that sort of silence with Fenris, and he doesn’t blame her. He is so _broken_ , he is incapable — 

She bursts upwards with a great gasp and water cascading off her. She whips her hair, sending a vigorous spray of water arcing out that catches Fenris in its path. He forgets himself and chuckles at the mess.

Hawke pushes a clump of wet hair out of her face and blinks several times to clear her eyes of water. Her long, dark eyelashes are slicked to points and Fenris thinks it is quite becoming. He should tell her. She curls her palms over the edge of the tub and rests her chin on them. There are freckles on her shoulders he’s never seen before, didn’t know existed, and he wishes he could make her stand up to let him see them.

He slouches with his back slumped comfortably against the chair, knees parted wide. He has resumed use of the wine glass.

She peers at him over the edge of the tub, chin resting on the backs of her hands as she ponders thoughtfully, her face arranged in the familiar expression of calculation and processing that he lov — that he —

 _Venhedis_ , he thinks. And then, _Fuck it_.

He loves her. He loves her. He loves her. Maybe not the first night, the night he discovered he was fighting alongside a mage, but certainly by the time slavers came to reclaim Fenris in an ambush on the wounded coast, and this little mage had placed herself between them to shout fiercely up the jagged cliffs — “ _Fenris is not a slave!_ ”  

He loves her. He does. He is drowning in it.

Her eyes have taken on a somber flatness while she watches him. But — 

“It’s stuffy in here. You should take all your clothes off,” she chirps.  

A surprised laugh bursts out of him. He cocks his head to the side and dares to tease her: “Is that so?”

“Yes,” Hawke assures him. “Definitely.”

“Thank you for worrying about my well-being and comfort in these dire times,” he deadpans.

“Oh, it’s no matter — just trying to be a good friend.” She adopts an airiness, continuing the game.

“Mm, that reminds me — I want to wash your hair.” The words of tumble out much too soon.

“Maker’s balls, Fenris! Am I that repulsive?”

“No! Fasta Vas.” Once he understands her reaction is borne out of self-consciousness and not because she doesn’t want him to, he feels more confident continuing. “I simply...would like to.”

“Are you sure? I can do it myself, you know — I was getting to that part.”

“Hawke." He was firm. "I would enjoy the opportunity.”

“Alright, then.”

He ducks his head, riding out the surge of triumph with a quiet little grin to himself. He wants to touch her hair. He wants to touch her everywhere, but he is going to start there. It is an excuse to touch her, and it is one that he is happy with, one with purpose.

It is also, he hopes, an appropriate way to show affection. He is still working through these things. He is still learning.

As he stands and makes his way to the cupboard, he finds it hard to believe that just that morning Isabela had come around to invoke another indiscretion with Fenris, another dismal dalliance. It had happened from time to time, following the night he spent with Hawke three years ago. His feelings for the pirate brought forth no brief flashes of his past or indignant fury, he could blithely sink his cock into the pirate’s sex without worry. They’d fucked occasionally. Isabela was his friend, perhaps, and he admired her unapologetic pursuit of whatever she wanted from life, but there was nothing complicated lingering between them. Isabela herself had once explained to Merrill that what she does is only skin-deep, and Fenris was no exception. They’d had a few nights over the course of a few years of bodies rutting in the dark with ruthless fucking. It is something Fenris knows well, from both sides of the coin — the rough handling of flesh. He wishes he didn’t.

He kneels in front of the cupboard, and roots for the soap bar he loves best, one scented with orange and almonds. He finds divine providence in the fact that he hadn’t decided to stick around and sleep with Isabela that morning, and hadn’t been punishing the pirate with brutal fucking when Hawke dropped by. The luck of this coincidence surely means there is, in fact, a god. She is possibly in his tub right now.

His hand brushes a cold, old and brittle glass vial of something in the cupboard, and he pulls it free with a frown. He’s handled it before but he reads the label for the first time now. “I’d forgotten about this. Here,” he says, and tosses it Hawke in the bath. She catches it with a splash.

He resumes rooting, explaining from inside the cupboard. “It was left here, before, by the previous occupants. I could not read what the label said at the time so I tossed it here and forgot all about it. It’s yours, if you like, a bathing oil of some kind — ”

The sticky-sweet smell of peaches assaults him solidly. Sweet Hawke has upended the entire vial into her bath.

“...but it’s very _rare_ I believe, and outrageously expensive as it’s a distilled oil _for use in moderation_ ,” Fenris finishes dryly.

He rises and begin to prop open all the windows, inhaling the fresh air with great need. “Hawke, I believe you shall carry the smell of peaches on you for the next ten years.”

“Well. Good,” she says, sounding slightly bratty. It makes him smile as his back is to her while he flings open the shutters.

The overwhelming strength of the perfume is dizzying, so Fenris leaves the room to open the remaining windows, hoping his animal-strong sense of smell won’t spoil the afternoon. When he returns to Hawke it is with great purpose — he snags the soap, drags a chair closer to her, and sits beside the tub. He rolls his shirtsleeves up.

Hawke is sitting before him and appears nothing short of giddy as she smiles and chews her lip, and twists around to present her back to him. Fenris is almost intoxicated with the heavy-sweet smell of the water and the sight of her skin. And the wine, likely.

He is now near enough to see the delicate spray of freckles on her shoulders in great detail. He considers a caress, but an instinct urges him: _Not yet._

He wets the soap and draws a lather and when he is ready, presses the pad of his forefinger lightly to the underside of her chin. He tilts Hawke’s head back. She does not resist.

The moment his fingers delve into her hair, her eyes squeeze shut.

“I will endeavor not to get soap in them,” Fenris mutters. Hawke says nothing.

He begins washing her hair. There is an echo to his actions, something his hands remember but his mind does not. And it’s pleasant. Perhaps his mother had once washed Fenris’s hair like this; gentle, but brisk and efficient. When his task is nearly finished, and his excuse to touch Hawke’s hair dwindles to a close, he thinks of all the times she has jogged in front of him to some perilous destination, hips swinging and perfect ass swaying. And her shiny hair bouncing. He has always imagined —

His hands hover just behind her temples. He wants to. He really wants to.

But he clears his throat, and continues. He slides the thick mass of her hair between his palms to squeeze out the excess soap. And then he bargains with himself: he runs his fingers between the thick ropes of her wet hair, and when his knuckle ensnares on a little snarl or a tangle, he gently works it loose with great care. Reverent, he smoothes it so her hair fans out against her shoulders.

His bargain with himself fails. It does not lessen what he wants to do. He gives himself over: he winds his fist into her hair until he clutches a thick handful at the back of her head, and then he tugs, sharply, so that Hawke’s throat is exposed and she looks up at the ceiling.

She beams at the exposed wooden beams. His heart roars. That could have gone _very badly_.

He releases her and shifts in his chair, uncomfortable with how his dick can throb with such remarkable urgency. How obscene. She’s just bathing.

He gets up and fetches a ewer sitting by the open window, water inside considerably cooled from the near-winter breeze blowing in. He sits again, and scrapes his chair a little closer.

“Rinse,” he explains, voice rough with restraint. Hawke, bless her, damn her, obliges by leaning backwards on both palms, and curving her spine to push her chest up as she lets her head fall back. She knows exactly what the fuck she’s doing.

“This will be cold,” he warns her.

“Good,” she answers, sounding somewhat like a brat. Fenris snickers.

He pours freezing water down her back.

“Shit!” she sputters, tensing her shoulders and jerking upright. Ignited and wicked, Fenris tuts and hushes Hawke through his quiet chuckling before he does it again.

Gooseflesh raises on her arms and Hawke grits her teeth to endure the cold. He rakes his fingers through her hair and rinses out every trace of soap. He rubs the wet strands between his fingertips to feel for the cleaner texture, to make sure. She smells like oranges and almonds and Hawke. And peaches. Obviously.

Her lips are pulled taut around her bared teeth as she fights to keep from shivering. She sits still and does not whine at all, and all at once, he loves her for this. When he’s done, he sets the empty ewer on the floor by his feet. One hand rests on his thigh while he reaches with the other, around, in front of her, to cup the underside of her chin. He gently tilts her head back until he is looking down at her, and she is looking up at him. He kisses her forehead.

“Finished,” he says.

She whimpers slightly. Fenris delights in this. Somehow, the sound is empowering.

She sighs and melts against the side of the tub, blushing and smiling. The smile isn’t even for him. It’s just hers — her genuine reaction.

She is _so responsive_.

Fenris, the devil, the demon, the dominant, returns to his chair. He made a goddess whimper with just a kiss to her forehead. He has washed the sun’s hair.

And she’d liked it when he pulled it. Perhaps even deities and savage beasts can find common ground in the way they like to be touched. Or not touched, as it were. He wonders if Hawke is the type of lover who whines when denied.

His resolve melts away. It is his nature, after all, to act more animal than man. Unrestrained. Perhaps Hawke isn’t aware of what she is flirting with. He briefly wonders if she is even aware of this developing game, and quickly, he chases that doubt away because — it’s Hawke — _of course she is_. She knows him better than anyone. She knows he has no concept of his life before lyrium and that most of his identity is still wrapped in the trappings of being a slave: used, abused, a killer, a sinner.

So here she is, helping him build new memories, brick by brick. She is helping him craft new experiences from scratch, not taking a single step forward until he does too, and awaiting his every signal and instruction. And consent.

It’s what Hawke does. She rescues. 

He takes a swallow of wine and smirks, opening a book in his lap. He’d never imagined she would be so understanding. So willing. If she wishes to fuck the devil than so be it — but first, he will make her beg for it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Force the moment to its crisis" is from my favorite poem, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T.S. Eliot. That line goes through my head all the hecking time, even while writing, but I'll let myself use it in this instance bc this is FANfiction and i am a fan of prufrock. :)


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bagatelle keeps givin' me shit about being a tease, so this chapter is dedicated to them!! 
> 
> >:}

“You’re going to prune,” Fenris mentions, not looking up from his book. He pops a piece of fruit into his mouth blithely while Hawke continues to gawk at him from the bathtub.

“Good,” she snaps, sounding like a complete brat. He must press his lips together to keep from smiling.

Hawke blinks, and sinks, slinking back down into the bathwater to pout. It’s glorious, he thinks. He continues looking down at his book, smirking and benign, while Hawke skims her hands over the water and visibly bristles. She wants something to happen. If she wants it, she will have to ask.

Fenris. Wants. To be asked.

Her idle movements slow and Fenris knows she has gone still with the pensive expression as she considers and puzzles. She trails languid (pruning) fingers over the rippling surface of the bathwater, lost in thought. She is a clever and capable woman, and Fenris does not for one moment doubt her.

“Fenris,”—she looks up, and there is a sly smile simmering behind the benign line of her lips—”Will you read to me?”

It is a well-played hand. He puts the book down.

He gives her a half-smile, impudent with intent, and reaches for another slice of crisp apple to eat before it browns. Chewing, he pours more wine into Hawke’s empty glass. He rises from the chair and brings it to her, stopping to stand over the tub and gaze down at the woman in the water with a soft expression he knows belies his desire. She flushes. She takes the offering of wine shyly.

The enchantment from the fire runes in the tub has worn off so the water now cools in a typical fashion, accelerated by the brisk air blowing in from the open window; it is a cold wind which carries with it the scent of imminent winter. The fire in the hearth is the hottest thing in the room. After Hawke, of course. Her cheeks pinken persistently, despite the slackening heat. It’s lovely, he thinks.

When he sits, he pours the last of the Yalumba into his own glass, and reaches for the Book of Shartan. He opens it to a page at random. He is more than capable of satisfying her request. It makes him confident.

When he begins to read aloud, Hawke tosses back her wine in one swallow and closes her eyes with a small smile. She leans back against the reclining edge of the tub, and lifts her hair so it drapes out over the rim and does not get wet again. It is damp and uncombed and drying into wilder waves than Fenris is used to seeing. He loves it. Thoroughly.

She rests her arms along the sides of the tub and her small smile grows softer as she listens, into something subdued and suspiciously resembling bliss. Fenris does not trust this.

(It isn’t that he does not trust her, it is that he does not believe he reads her expression correctly. That cannot be right. He can’t be doing that. With simply his voice.)

He continues to read, and in the back of his mind, he recalls the way that shapes of letters looked like arcane symbols, once — something foreign and unknowable, entirely out of reach for slave like Fenris. But now he can read. He takes the arcane shapes and shifts their mystery into salient new things ripe with meaning. He speaks these shapes aloud now, and turns them into words as he reads to Hawke, the woman he loves, who does not know how he feels. And it feels like enchantment. He wonders if this is how it feels to wield magic. A part of him pretends that it is, and that he is special, even if he is only reading. It is still a wondrous thing to him — this sorcery of spelling and sentences.

She sighs.

He stops.

Fenris looks up, abruptly self-conscious. “Am I boring you yet?”

She snorts. Her eyes are still closed. “Maker, no. Never. I don’t think that’s possible. Your voice is the music to my every fantasy.”

Perhaps he has misheard her. That cannot be what she means, as much as he wishes it to be true.

“...Really?” he asks, low and drawn out and dubious. Please let it be true. Please. Please.

Hawke bites her lip and grants his wish: she nods, and confirms it.

He huffs out an insipid chortle as he is rendered wordless and bashful. He darts his eyes away, suddenly finding the baseboards to the left fascinating, as is his custom. This shameful habit is a malingering symptom of abuse, and he knows it. Sometimes he struggles with maintaining eye-contact.

But not in here, not with her — he looks up at Hawke, filthy mind overturning possibilities. _Your voice is the music to my every fantasy_ , she’d said. And meant it.

Fenris stands. He has plans. He moves the chair out of the way, feeling her watchful eyes adhering to his every movement. He turns and leans his back against the wall.

When he brings a hand to his lower stomach and lets it rest there, Hawke breathes a little faster. She wets her lips. She _really_ wants him.  

He lets her squirm a little with the waiting, until it becomes too much for him too.

“Stand up,” he orders. He catches his bottom lip between his teeth, feeling devious and dirty and still somewhat bashful. “Let me look at you.”

She rises in an instant, perfumed bathwater sluicing from her skin. She purses her lips and looks a little mischievous as she tilts one hip down and brings her arms up to hide her breasts and sex from him. She is being a _tease_.

“Drop them,” Fenris tells her, rubbing a sweaty palm on his breeches. “We both know you’re not shy.”

She drops them. She gives a coy shrug and stands up a little straighter, clasping her hands behind her back so he can perversely leer at her — at his leisure. Bless her.

A scarlet flush creeps over Hawke’s chest and up her neck as he rakes his gaze across every blessed inch of her. She watches him breathe; and he, in turn, watches her _everything_ —

She is perfect. Scars especially. It guts him.

His cock is throbbing. His breath quickens. Fenris rests a hand on his lower stomach hoping to still himself, to stay his hand from reaching into his trousers too soon because then they’ll be done with this —

and he wants to continue. This is a gift, he thinks, staring at her naked waist. He drops eyes to her thighs. And he will not squander it. He wants to take his time treasuring.

Hawke shows no reaction save for one quick peek at the front of his trousers, presumably to confirm the obvious: he is hard and wants her. Fenris stares at her hips and his gaze drifts down and between them, to her sex. She is so fucking perfect. He swallows, and licks his lips. He is fighting a losing battle with calmness and will.

Maybe Hawke will follow him into hell. He parts his lips on a steadying inhale, readying to speak, but loses steam. He tries again. “Hawke, if I ask you to—”

“I would love to,” she blurts out, interrupting with eagerness.

Maybe she doesn’t know what he is about to request. He will make a second attempt: “Are you s—”

“Yes!” she exclaims, then pauses and says again, this time sounding more composed, “Fenris. _Yes_.”

He laughs, feeling warm and thoroughly charmed. He catches her eye and nods to himself, stilling with a smile remaining in place. He lowers his hand. He lowers his hand and cups his erection through the supple leather of his leggings.

It unmakes Hawke. Her mouth falls open with an exhaled Oh, and she drops her hands to her sides, fingertips glinting with shimmering electricity. Sparks of purple lightning jump from her fingers. And when she realizes this, her eyes grow round and: “Oh, _shit_ , Fenris—I’m sor—”

He interrupts to say, “Take caution, mage. You’re standing in water. I wouldn’t want you to get electrocuted.” He is intent on dragging her backward into their moment of heated gazes and glazed expressions.  

“Yes. I’d hate to be blasted unconscious right when the fun part is about to begin.” She smiles at him shyly, and it’s adorable.

His lips quirk up. He quietly instructs, “Keep your hands clasped behind your back. Like you had them.”

Her hands go behind her back. Clasped, just like she had them.

She watches him, chest rising and falling with her faster-than-normal breath, and Fenris roves his gaze down the nearly imperceptible tremble in her knees. She wants him so badly, and he finds it difficult to believe.

He shifts his hand down, thumbing up the bottom hem of his tunic, so that his palm rests over the lacings of his breeches. He flicks his eyes up to lock with hers. He runs a single finger over the obvious outline of his arousal.

She moans a little, not letting her eyes drift from his. “Please,” she begs in a small voice. “Please, Fenris, whatever you—”

“Come here.”

She wastes no time obeying, and steps out of the tub to pad closer to Fenris. Hawke stops a few inches away from him, wide-eyed and entreating, and smelling entirely of peaches and Hawke and heat. Fenris inhales sharply, alight with animal desire, and exhales slowly, trying to rein it in. The room feels considerably warmer with her standing so close. She waits for his next instruction.

He lets the moment tilt a little and linger. He savors this feeling so that he may keep it etched in his memory forever. And then, he says,

“ _Kneel_.”

She goes to her knees in front of him. His stomach lurches and he feels heady, empowered, aroused, overwrought — 

She is strong, She is good, She is just, She is — She is a fever dream, on her knees. This goddess knelt before him, skin like milk and honey, beams of morning’s light, glowing — full breasts like perfect peaks of gold and cream, dipped in rose, tipped in bronze.

His breath comes faster, nostrils flaring as he stares down at her, incredulous. A goddess has obeyed his command.

Fenris — the kicked dog, the savage, the saboteur — he imagines her with Anders. Their impassioned views on mages coincide and align. Anders made a blind man see. Anders already loves her so painfully, so obviously.

Or perhaps Sebastian, the prince — Hawke is sweet and fair and playful. She is luminescent with glee. She will make an excellent mother. She is the Champion of Kirkwall; she is nobility.

Fenris has no lands, no titles, no wealth to give her. Nor does he have his heart, bleeding and beating and _whole_ upon a platter with which to offer. He is a husk tumbling at her heels. He has no devoted following of doe-eyed mages or rescued refugees falling at his feet. He is not royalty; he has no cold stone castle wreathed in distant conflict.

Fenris does not even have a last name to offer Hawke, should they ever marry.

He has nothing. He is nothing. He is the gnarled and twisted thing leering at her from a dark corner, come to prey on a hero’s perfection. He wants to feast on the Champion and it will not be pretty, it will not be a tale bard’s sing, it will be ugly and dark. Like him. He is the blight wolf, made wretched with grief, and she, the moon affixed to ink-night sky; a far-flung desire at which he howls for the span of eternity.

He is blind with need.

Because, somehow, despite these things, she is _here_. With _him_. And she is _his_. She is kneeling at his feet and staring up at him in wonder, naked and trembling and awaiting instruction.

Encouraged, he dips his brow and locks his eyes to hers, obscured somewhat from hair falling over his forehead. Without breaking their gaze, he slowly starts to unlace the ties of his leggings. This makes a shudder rip through Hawke, but she bites the inside of her lip and does not waver. She understands she is not supposed to look down.

As his laces are loosened, inches from her chin, her will weakens and she glances at his hand moving so close to her face. She presses her lips together briefly, wetting them, and Fenris stops what he’s doing. He stills.

He softly cups her by the chin, and slowly raises her face until she’s looking up at him again.

She whimpers. She won’t look down anymore.

Perhaps if they marry he will take her name. She will waste herself on him, brand him as hers in title and surname. He will be Fenris Hawke. His borrowed names will mean _Little Wolf, Bird-of-Prey_.

The notion does not displease him.

He pulls open the laces and decides to tease her a bit longer — he reaches inside his trews and smalls and wraps a rough palm around his iron-hard length, completely aware of what this is doing to Hawke. He can smell it.

He smirks. He strokes himself with agonizing slowness, stifling a groan to masquerade complete composure. She is on her knees. He is in charge. This is the game that they play. He will not allow her to see how it has wrecked and rebirthed him.

It appears to have the same effect on Hawke. She presses her thighs together firmly, tensing, and her rapid breath falls just short of panting. She blinks up at him, still staring into his eyes, even as Fenris finally pulls his cock free of fabric and leather confines.

He strokes himself, pumping slowly. The only sounds are the rustle of his fist hitting fabric and their wicked breath, and the low fire demurring; popping and cracking.

Hawke swallows. Her hands — which have been diligently laid with flattened palms atop her thighs the whole time — jerk with an innate need she doesn’t address. She digs her fingers into her skin to stop it from happening again. She is wound tight and vibrating with want.

Fenris has never felt taller. He stops, and keeping his cock in hand, reaches with the other to push some of the wild waves out of her face, resisting the urge to tangle his fingers ungainfully in their impossible silkiness. He gazes down at her with wretched and naked fondness.

**“Suck,” he softly commands.**


	7. Chapter 7

Her shoulders slump and her eyes go heavy-lidded in a relief that clearly says “ _Finally_.”

But before she obeys, she pauses and looks up at him through her eyelashes.

“Yes, Master,” she gently demurs.

Oh, _fuck_ —

His skull thumps backwards against the wall and his eyes flutter shut. Fenris had forgotten.

But Hawke — sweet Hawke, evil Hawke, fucking _Hawke_ — had not.

He drops a weak fist against the wall and swallows a hiss as Hawke takes his cock in hand and swallows it. He starts swearing softly in Tevene, words rising unbidden and croaking, as her cheeks hollow and she sucks. He gasps. He is coming undone.

“ _You are so good_ ,” he growls softly in foreign words she can’t understand. “ _So good, good girl, Hawke —_ ”

He feels the slick glide of her tongue run along the underside of his length. A low, guttural sound rises from his throat and he grits his teeth against it, anchoring one palm flat on the wall behind him as the other clenches tight with a fistful of her hair at the back of her head; slowing her. He is struggling to master his stamina and not come too quickly. He is trying to be gentle for her and not succumb to the savage urge to fuck her throat.

Through his haze of pleasure narrated by his hoarse and broken cursing, he remembers to look down and memorize her. Hawke’s eyes are closed, long lashes fanned and shadowed against her cheek. She is beautiful. He rolls his shoulders forward, leaving the wall, so that he is curled over her; a parenthetical.

“Look up. Look at me, Hawke. Open your eyes,” he croaks out, so low, so desperate, that it sounds wretched and unrecognizable to him.

Her eyes fly open and meet his. Her mouth is hot and wet. Her soft little hand still pumps him as her mouth pops from the tip; lips swollen and red. And parted. Venhedis.

He cups the back of her head, fighting with every fiber of his being not to go to fast or be too rough or yank her hair to fuck her mouth — 

Something she finds in his face makes her eyes flutter shut. She returns him to her mouth and groans around his cock.

A low whine builds in the back of his throat and his fist tangles in her hair as he clutches her closer; he is aching and needing, building — when his hips thrust infinitesimally of their own accord.

Hot regret bids him to still. Fenris _hated_ when this was done to him. He would never want Hawke to suffer the same indignity. An apology works its way up from his clumsy tongue when Hawke uses her clever, quick one to lap at him. She flattens her palms against the wall, on either side of his hips. She hums her happy consent as she sucks and takes him deeper into her mouth, to the threshold of her throat.

He grits his teeth and growls softly, rasping curses as he pushes her hair from her face and tentatively pushes his hips forward once more. He thrusts and she trusts. She relaxes her throat and takes him all; and in a matter of four quick thrusts Fenris is undone, he wrenches backwards, away from her, screwing his eyes shut as he comes so hard that for a moment he is nothing. Weightless and sightless, adrift. Infinite.

When his senses return, he swallows harshly and looks down at Hawke. He feels sheepish. He finished with embarrassing alacrity, the evidence of which drips from Hawke’s chin.

She arches one tart eyebrow and shoots him a bratty expression.

He barks out a short laugh and blushes as he looks away. He is unsure of how to handle this moment. He doesn’t know the etiquette. In his experience, this is when Fenris would be left alone to clean himself.

He looks back to her and waits for Hawke to signal some measure of tenderness. Some of his spend has gotten into her hair, he notices with a wince. How...vulgar.

“I fear I’ve made a mess of you again,” he murmurs.

Hawke abruptly rises and wobbles on stiff legs to the standing cask of cold, clean water. She dips the bucket in to fill it. Without a word, she marches to the tub and lifts one foot, and then the other, to stand in it. She dumps the bucket over her head, gasping at the coldness as she rinses clean.

“There,” she splutters. “Fixed it. I’m clean again, Fenris.”

He cannot help but laugh. He laughs with his head thrown back. He laughs with his eyes shut. He laughs mostly at himself, and at the break in tension which Hawke so effectively orchestrated. He is always safe; with her.

The knowledge makes him bolder.

He feels the smile still affixed to his face as his back leaves the wall and he pulls his shirt over his head. He tucks himself away and hitches his leggings higher, not bothering to relace them yet. He crosses to Hawke, confident as he swings one arm around her back and easily picks her up.

She squirms immediately in his arms, whining “Fenris, put me down! I’m too heavy!”

“Hush,” he mutters, dismissive.

She does.

Fenris smirks above her head, where she cannot see it.

* * *

 

A few short strides to his bed, and onto it he, the conqueror, tosses her. She lands with a bounce and an adoring gaze and Fenris has never felt stronger.

He rests a knee on the edge of the bed and tests the weight of the moment, giving it a minute to come crashing down and fell his grand plans for her. It doesn’t. She rolls onto her side, heavy-lidded and delectably naked. She stares up at him. Her thighs press together.

“I’ll start without you Fenris, I swear by the Maker’s holy arsehole.”

A soft chuckle escapes him and he moves his other knee to straddle her thighs. He slowly leans forward, bracing each forearm on either side of her head. His hair falls forward from his eyes and brushes her beautiful face. She is lit with a blue glow that Fenris realizes belatedly emanates from him.

He brings his lips so close to hers, teasing her with the nearness and the warmth.

Her perfect whispered whimper: “Please. Please, _please_ kiss me.”

His lips part at her request when he pauses. A soft smile crosses his lips as he cocks his head and reconsiders.

Clever Hawke catches on fast and licks her lips. Under a sly glint she murmurs, “ _Please_ , master.”

A dash of self-consciousness and the goddess blushes, biting her lip and staring up at him. The moment ignites within him and tumbles to the pit of his belly, burning, burning, yearning. He feels his eyes flutter shut and his forehead drops to touch hers as a groan comes from him.

They are remaking the word. He will never hear it the same way again. A part of his history feels unwritten.

She trembles beneath him and the movement brings attention to her breasts pressing against his bare chest. She clutches her fingers in the sheets and Fenris can smell several kinds of citrus and the fire warm and wet between her thighs.

His lips crash into hers with impatience and ferocity; he is _done_ waiting. He wants to see this woman open and wanting, wet; wretched with desire and wrecked on sex. He will do this. He will love the goddess until she is ruinous with sin and dripping from his attentions.

She moans wordless gratitude into his mouth and Fenris inhales it; kisses her harder. Their teeth knock and her hips press up from the mattress into his; seeking. Her fingers clutch his sheets and unmakes his bed while their unreal kiss unmakes _him_ ; and if his thoughts could be coherent he’d wonder if she were afraid to touch him.

His hand travels down to the swell of her hip. He clutches it. His fingers dig into the divot just behind her hip while his thumb presses down hard on the front of it. He will bruise her soft skin.

She loves it. As she moans, her chest arches up and drags against his.

She moves and mewls beneath him and is so desperate for him to touch her that Fenris aches to fuck her. With a growl he takes her hands and pins them above her head. A glance down at her perfect body before he pushes a knee between her thighs and wedges them open for him. He grinds his hips down against her bare cunt and it wrenches a cry from Hawke; right against his mouth.  

Breathless, Fenris breaks the kiss. He stares down at her, eyes scanning her face as she pants and waits for him; ever-patient and entreating, eyes locked to his.

She places a timid kiss on his chin.

He almost smiles from it. Instead he sits back on his haunches just to look at Hawke. To touch her. At his leisure. He ignores the pulsing throb of his cock, confined in his breeches.

Her breaths are fast and her parted lips red from their kissing. Her eyes beg him for everything. Venhedis.

He wants to see her sweet mouth shape around spoken words of begging. He wants her to cry for him. Both of these, he realizes, he finds sacred.

He moves his hands to her thighs and lets them hover just above her naked skin; close enough for Hawke to feel the warmth of him. Her breath catches and she throws her head back with a slight growl at the thwarted momentum.

He chuckles and brushes feather-light fingertips down her thighs. Hawke holds her breath; expectant. Fenris shakes his hair out of his face to watch her reaction; never mind that he can easily scent it. It is heady.

Eyes locked to hers, he continues trailing his fingertips lightly down her legs; over her knees, her calves, behind himself to her ankles. He opens his mouth to joke about tickling her, but decides just to do it instead. He tickles the soles of her feet.

Hawke squeals and giggles immediately, throwing out sharp little kicks to get away from his fluttering fingertips.

Fenris laughs and easily catches her ankles, stilling her. He places a small kiss on the inside of her ankle and Hawke stops laughing at this small gesture, her gaze becoming dangerously love-struck and soft.

“My apologies, Hawke,” Fenris explains, “but I had a pressing need to know if the Champion of Kirkwall was ticklish or not.”

“Hmph,” Hawke pouts, and juts her chin. She regards the ceiling, a smile catching the corner of her mouth and betraying her pout.

Fenris laughs. Still holding her ankles, he opens her legs. Their gaze meets and it entices him. His hands slide up the backs of her calves to hook behind her knees and he slowly presses them back. He expects a natural resistance, a moment belying inflexibility when her knees can open no wider — but that moment does not come and as the smile leaves his face, one forms on hers. When her knees are pushed nearly to her shoulders, her face flushes and she squeezes her hands together — arms still stretched above her head just as he’d instructed.

His mouth falls open. He stares at her and he is gutted. She is perfect. She is perfect and she is waiting and she is wet for him.

Dragging his eyes away from her impressive demonstration of flexibility, they move up and alight on her sex before flitting up to her face. He quirks a brow, expecting explanation.

“Fenris,” she purrs, teasing him. “Would you like to see me put my legs behind my head?” She punctuates the statement with a roll of her hips and his eyes dart down to the movement, and fix on her sex.

Still staring, he swallows hard and rasps, “Yes. Desperately. Another time, perhaps...I’ve plans, now.”

He grabs her hands and brings them behind her knees to hold them open for him. When her legs are spread wide, her desire is laid bare and latent before him. Slick, humbling, and honest. Fenris is ravenous.

Her lips part on a shaky exhale as she watches him study her. She trembles beneath his studious gaze. Fenris, awed and insatiable, memorizes her.

When his hands finally cover her breasts, Hawke’s head tilts back and she emits a soft, needy sound. He kneads and squeezes, as gently as his willpower can allow, and brushes his thumbs over her nipples. He pinches one between thumb and forefinger, and Hawke squeaks and squirms, igniting. He leans forward and takes one between his teeth, lapping gently while it is caught, and Hawke’s feminine gasp rewards him.

Fenris devours her. He cups the side of her face and kisses her neck, tastes her pulse and the wild fluttering in the hollow of her throat. Her sounds, soft, grow needier and she rolls her hips up against him. Seeking. He leaves a hand resting on her neck as his lips press into her collarbone and he tastes her skin again; and again; and—

His palm lingers atop her throat. He pauses. He glances up at it.

“It’s okay,” Hawke rushes to assure him. Fenris finds it curious that she would see through the latency of his sick, wicked desire. He trusts her, however.

He licks his lips, and wrapping his hand around the delicate column of her throat, gives a slight squeeze. It does something to Hawke. Her gaze intensifies and her wanting quickens, and in a rush Fenris snatches his hand back and covers his mouth with it, ashamed of his corrupting influence. He will ruin her. She will let him.

Hawke releases her legs and sits up on her elbows to look at him, concern and confusion etched in her features.

He struggles to articulate an appropriate apology, but nothing can bring him back from the brink of this. He feels monstrous. “Hawke, I don’t know why—I’m so—”

“It turned me on.” She interrupts him flatly.

Fenris swallows. “Truly?” 

“Maker, yes,” she sighs and flops back down on his bed to stare at the ceiling. She folds her hands over her stomach as if she isn’t naked and glorious, his personal awakening.

After a short moment of searching her thoughts, she reaches for his hand resting atop his thigh. He overturns it, touched that she would still want to hold it.

She seems pleased by his reaction, but something sly lurks in her little smile. “May I?” she asks.

He nods and obliges, offering his hand to her without question.

She takes his fingertips and presses them to her clit. “Oh, fuck,” she breathes, and presses a pillow over her face. It stifles her moans as she holds his hand steady and writhes against it. The boldness of her gesture stuns him into stillness.

 _This is too fast_ , he thinks. Tall structures require strong foundations and sturdy rafters. Brick by brick.

He snatches the pillow from her face, but leaves his other hand to her will. He wants to see her face. He needs to see her face.

“We need to talk,” Fenris says. His fingers twitch against her sex and _fasta vass,_ the temptation to touch her deeper and harder looms, menacing.

Hawke laughs, embarrassed, and releases his hand to cover her reddening face. Fenris chuckles softly too, but drags her arms from her face to make her look at him.

“I didn’t say you should stop,” he mutters, and his fingers seek the center heat of her, of their own accord. He cannot help but smirk at her reaction when they slide between her legs. She melts. His lyrium brands glow dully and Fenris feels suddenly alive.

“Oh, fuck. Fenris! Yes. Please. Please—that. Yes.”  
  
“I enjoy hearing you beg.”  
  
“... _Fuck_.”  
  
“You’re especially foul-mouthed when you’re left wanting, aren’t you?”  
  
“Fu—just keep talking, Fenris,” she gasps when his thumb lazily circles her clit.

He falls silent and cocks his head to the side when he sees a flash of an unspoken thought cross her face. Ever open and honest, Hawke blushes scarlet. Armed with the knowledge of what speaking can do to her, Fenris pitches his voice lower.

“Tell me what you are thinking,” he demands. Soft and dangerous.

She does not.

Fenris stops moving his hand.

“No!” she moans.

He removes his hand entirely and raises himself to loom over her, planting two fists on either side of her head.

“I said,” his voices comes out as a low and serious growl, “ _Tell me_.”  

Hawke’s eyes flutter closed and she clamps her thighs together. She swallows. The sweetest sort of agony lays open and bright on her features.

His voice. He did that. The power is heady, and when Hawke peeks up at Fenris, he is surprised to realize his face wears a cocksure smirk. He leans close to her ear and murmurs, “I could tell you to do anything and you’d do it, wouldn’t you?”


	8. Chapter 8

Eyes wide, Hawke chews her bottom lip. She nods, and Fenris believes neither of them are sure what she is truly admitting.

Quieter, with less force, Fenris asks once more. “So? What was it? What were you just thinking about?” Intensity creeps into his question. He doesn’t want to abuse her implicit trust in him, but he is still desperate to unearth her every secret.

Still chewing her bottom lip, Hawke nods. Acquiescing. She clears her throat. “You said we need to talk, so I...my mind dragged it somewhere filthy. Ever since”—she stops with a sigh, as if struggling to admit these things—“It’s, ah, a habit…? I suppose.”

“Go on,” Fenris instructs, and nips lightly at her throat. His hands brush lightly over her breasts. Encouragement.

“And so...just now, I was thinking of your naughty pillow talk, as I have so often, and—oh _fuck—_ ”

Two of his fingers plunge past her entrance and render her wordless. His thumb returns to her clit and softly, slowly, agonizing, begins to circle it. He watches as her fingers curl in his sheets, and her hips jut up—and he ceases. It is abrupt.

Hawke squeals and pounds a weak fist into his mattress before letting out a ringing peal of warm laughter. It warms him, too.

“Oh, fuck you, Fenris. Honestly. Fuck you so much,” she half-groans, half-giggles.  
  
Fenris laughs quietly. He teases her, “Well, wasn’t that your endgame? If you’re still interested in pursuit of your goal, that is…”  
  
“Yes”—she inhales sharply as his hand begins his skillful, tender attentions again. ”Fuck— _I hate you_ ,” she squirms and gasps. Fenris chuckles at her.  
  
“Sadist,” she hisses.  
  
“All things considered—it’s entirely possible,” he admits frankly, his hand still slowly working her. “Now stop trying to steer us off course,” he smiles, and uses his free hand to pinch her nipple. Hard. She, in turn, rewards Fenris with a dark and sexual noise he’s never heard before. 

“Fenris,” she breathes through gritted teeth. “I was thinking about you talking because—Andraste’s _tits_ —shit—because”—he increases his speed and Hawke pauses her words to pant, her fists clenching and twisting into his sheets—“because for the past three years that has been—fuck, _Fenris_ —my most prolific fantasy and I—I have often— _fucked myself_ with my own fingers—” she braces a hand against the wall above her head and pushes herself down into his touch; writhing as his motions come faster, harder, his every intent is to unravel her— 

  
“I have made myself come to thoughts of you, images of you, memories of you— _only_ you, oh _Fenris_ —ceaselessly for so long and— _Maker’s mercy_ —so just now—when— _yes, yes, harder, yes_ , like that—fuck—just now when I was thinking about how terrible I would be at pillow talk in return—saying naughty things for you—the first thing that popped into my mind was—was just an image of me blissfully bouncing on your cock, panting and chanting ‘ _I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you_ ’—yes yes yes, Fenris! _Fuck_!”

Her thighs clamp shut around his hand. Fenris cannot help the startled chuckle that escapes him so he presses his face into her neck to stifle it, biting his lip. He covers her mouth with his hand as she comes undone; muffling her loud, pretty scream. He wants thousands more of these. He wants to wring them from her by force. He wants to bottle the essence and wear it around his neck. He wants to claim every one of them.

She unclenches her trembling thighs enough for Fenris to withdraw his hand, and he quells the urge to taste his fingers. Or to make her taste them.

She crosses her arms over her face, hiding. From beneath her elbows she moans, “Oh, I hate you so much right now.”

“No, you don’t.” He is quiet and confident.

She swallows. “No. I don’t.” Her voice is thick, and there is an alarming _wrongness_ to it. Fenris sits up to look at her. Her next breath catches, and now Fenris understands.

She is crying.

He is familiar with this. There is—after the rush, after the pleasure windfall—there is a crash. There can be a _too much, too much, everything all at once_. A dam breaks.

Aching with pitless tenderness, he gently pulls her arms from her face. He cradles her face between his hands, after gazing up at him, her eyes screw shut as her tears fall harder. Mostly, Fenris doesn’t want Hawke to feel ashamed or dirty; like he always did. He feverishly wants her to feel safe with him; and this newly-minted desperation surprises him. And yet, it doesn’t.

“I’m sorry,” Hawke whispers. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”

Intimacy swarms this moment, nearly bringing Fenris to tears himself. Fenris knows precisely what is wrong with her.

He says nothing. Instead, he starts to kiss the trails of her tears from her cheeks. He kisses the salt of her sadness where it trickled to her jaw. He kisses tears trapped in her eyelashes. She giggles softly and he is uncertain as to what caused it, but once he has collected every tear from her beautiful face and no more fall, he softly kisses her mouth. Her eyes finally open again.

For this, he was ready. “Nothing,” he tells her, firm and soft, “is wrong with you. Nothing, Marian Hawke. I find you perfect in every way.”

Her mouth opens in surprise as fresh tears spring to her eyes, and something like shock, something like love, something like bliss sweeps over her face; but before Fenris can decipher the code of her reaction, he does the right thing: he pulls her into his arms. It was instinct. He holds her firmly against his chest as she cries softly into it, her little hands curled beneath her chin. He loves her so much, and it is overwhelming him. He is surging with it.

When Hawke has collected herself and finds her voice again, she whispers quiet words into the hollow of his throat. “I have never wanted anyone—anything—so bad as this.” Hushed and reverential, she adds “I want you so badly—and I did, from the moment I lay eyes on you in the alienage—and it has blindsided me ever since. When we, you know, the one night we—” she falters.

“Slept together,” Fenris murmurs against her hair. Her scent is all citrus and sex. It soothes him.

“Yes. That only made it worse for me—the wanting. Because then I knew. You know—” she brings her face up to regard him with earnest intensity. “I knew what it was like to be with you. Then I didn’t just imagine, I remembered. And I still wanted you just as desperately.”

Fenris has no words adequate enough for her confession, so he cradles her face in his hands and kisses her temple. He cannot recall ever having been shown, or showing, such silken affection. With Hawke, it just feels as natural and correct as the sun on his skin. He decides not to question it.

“Well, worse even, after that,” she speaks against his neck, warm breath gusting over ugly, sensitive lyrium. Her words came faster as if she’d held them close to her heart for far too long. “Because it was this earth-shattering thing for me, Maker’s balls, the kind of thing to topple mountains. And, Fenris—I know we moved too fast. I know why you had to leave. I know that now. But—I didn’t then. All I knew was that you just...walked away. You left. That night, right after, just like that.”

He presses his lips against her forehead and leaves them there as his chest constricts. He cups the nape of her neck with firm grip to stop his hand from shaking. Regret, molten and intense, overtakes him.

Hawke snuggles closer against his chest and tucks her fists tightly under her chin. She is at ease, and in this moment it is everything Fenris could have possibly wanted.

She jokes, “I mean, if you had been terrible—if you’d been a lousy lay, then this would all be fine! just”—she clucks her tongue and dusts her fingers off—“Goodbye!”

He snorts. It moves strands of her hair.

She continues joking, her voice reverting back to the silly, take-nothing-seriously light tone she usually reserves for everyone but him: “But, as it happens, you have a somewhat delightful cock and I’d be happy to get better acquainted with it."

Fenris pulls back to look down at her, one eyebrow raising.

“Alright, alright,” she laughs, and looks down at his chest. Her hands hesitate above his skin like she would very much like to touch him. She instead hovers over the lyrium, idly tracing his unmarred skin between the brands. She says something so softly that Fenris cannot hear it. He tilts her chin up and cocks his ear, an implicit request.

She looks into his eyes, brow furrowed, and Fenris feels glutted on the sanctity of her nearness. Her unyielding holiness. She is so beautiful he can barely endure it. She is naked and she loves him. The goddess wants him. He’s in love with a divini—

“I want to worship you,” she blurts out suddenly.

His heart stops in his chest. He ducks his gaze, blushing and humbled, and begins to stammer a confession of his inadequacy. “I—I don’t know what to—”

Hawke covers his mouth with her hand, unerringly coming to his rescue. Bluntly, she tells him, “I’m not done.”

He quirks an amused brow, thinking of when _he’d_ found need to cover her mouth just moments ago.

“Sorry,” she says sheepishly, and starts to retract her hand. Fenris catches her palm and kisses the center of it.

He clears his throat. “Before you continue, the ah...that mental image you presented me with—”

“What, me bouncing on your cock? That one?” she giggles, with a flap of her hand. Feigning flippancy.

Fenris chuckles and leans in closer to Hawke. He trails a hand down her side, pausing over the curve of her waist. Making his voice breathless and supple, high enough to mimic hers, he brushes his lips against her ear, “ _I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you._ ”

She freezes against him, eyes wide. Gooseflesh raises on her arms.

He continues, “Did you truly mean it? Or is it part of…” he trails off, unable to name what dark, exciting, enticing game has emerged between them. He knows she will understand.

Hawke sits bolt upright and stares down at him, aghast. “Fenris, honestly! Do you not know? Is it not painfully obvious—”

“Make it abundantly clear.” He gives a thin smile. He is unsure of how else to mortar the moment. A part of him—the slave part, the abused part, the wounded animal, wild with longing—is left wondering if this is real. Even now, after all this, his intrusive thoughts posed a threat without his permission. The day seemed dreamlike and plucked from his fantasies, start to finish. He could wake up from a blood mage’s thrall at any moment. He doesn’t want to doubt Hawke, but good things have never found Fenris. This could just be a wicked enchantment.

Hawke, her face openly adoring, takes a sharp and shuddery breath as if fighting sudden tears, and looks off to the side. She is all the good things. She is all the best parts of humanity. She is so good she has left humanity behind.

A sudden realization causes her to refocus on Fenris. “Wait a moment—is this part of—whatever? Making me profess my true feelings?” She hesitates, unsure.

Shaking his head, Fenris folds one arm to rest behind it, and relaxes his other hand over his lower stomach. Somehow he is relieved at her shyness behind the combination of the words _true_ and _feelings_. Her eyes follow the lines of his body in this new, relaxed pose, and Fenris drinks in her obvious appreciation.

When her gaze finally returns to his face, he’s smiling at her with one raised brow. She wrinkles her nose back at him, unapologetic for her admiration.

It seems to solidify things between them. There are details Fenris’s mind cannot conjure, no matter how cunning the blood mage working the enchantment. Fenris cannot imagine a fortune, a future, a lover, a creature as good as this.

“We’re in a...recess, I believe, at the moment,” he says.  
  
“We should have signals. Words, you know. Or something.”  
  
“We will.”

This somehow pleases Hawke and he watches her hold up a finger, making him wait as she closes her eyes and smiles at something. At nothing. At him. Hawke is warm, and soft, and sweet, and she is very much in love with him. She is strong and she is _his_ , Fenris realizes. This is happening.

Love, acknowledged and accepted, seeps into every part of him. It is a foreign but welcome warmth. He’s floating. This is a brand-new feeling.

“I love you, Fenris. It staggers me. I love you so much more than I ever thought I’d be capable of loving...anyone.”

He does not hesitate. Fenris sits up, one knee crooked beside her thigh, and planting one hand on the other side of her. He surrounds her.

“It’s terrible,” Hawke sniffs lightly. “I can’t say I recommend it.”

He lets out a quiet, surprised rumble of laughter, and is still smiling as he pulls her into his arms.

After a beat she shivers in his embrace, and Fenris babbles “Hm, are you cold? Ah, forgive me, I neglected the fire. And the windows are open. And you’re naked!  _Venhedis_! Clumsy of me.”

“No, no, I’m fine—”

But Fenris, inwardly cursing his negligence, is nearly on his feet already. Hawke grasps his hand and pulls him down again, unwilling to release him from the bed. It is charming.

“So,” Hawke grins sly and slow, “The _windows_ are open.”

He had wondered when she’d notice that. He chuckles, “Better to make peace with it now, Hawke—half of Hightown heard you screaming.”

She groans girlish exasperation and pulls a pillow to swat at him. “I hate you, Fenris.”

“Ah, ah—” he tuts, smug. “At least one hundred of my neighboring noblemen now know that to be a bald-faced lie, Hawke.”

“Hate!” she insists, and swings the pillow at him with force.

Laughing, he bats it away. “Yes, well. I hate you too.” It slipped out without thinking, and when he glances up to see if Hawke’s caught the meaning—yes. Of course she has. She is Hawke, and she misses nothing. She is squeezing the pillow to her chest and staring at him with naked adoration.

Fenris, feeling ten feet taller, tucks his smile away into the dimness of the rapidly darkening room. The last of early evening’s golden light slants in, casting a single solid stripe against the far wall.

“It’s getting late. You should stay the night,” Fenris decides.

“That right?”  
  
“Yes,” he says, firm. “Additionally, I cannot in good conscience send you home in the dress you arrived in. It’s ridiculous.”  
  
Hawke throws her head back and laughs. “What shall I wear home, then?”  
  
“You brought no other clothing? Oh, what a shame. It appears you simply shall have to stay here forever.”  
  
“And just remain naked, I suppose?”  
  
“Naturally.”  
  
“Well,” Hawke smiles, “Good.”

Smiling back and feeling unnaturally relaxed, Fenris leans against the wall. Satisfaction without destroying an enemy is another foreign sensation. And yet.

Hawke stands and yanks the sheet from the bed, wrapping herself in it. Unsteady on her feet, she wordlessly marches towards the door.

“Ah—Hawke?”

She spins dramatically to face him. “Hm?”

“Where are you off to?”  
  
“Oh, I just thought I’d pop ‘round down at the Hanged Man for a bit. Maybe play some cards.”  
  
Baffled, Fenris just stares at her.

Then, in the pinched voice of someone struggling not to giggle, she adds “Is that not what we do after we’re...intimate? I thought we always walked away from one another in the middle of the night following an intimate encounter— _oof_ —” Hawke laughs breathlessly as Fenris launches himself at her, picking her up and throwing her back onto the bed.

“ _Fasta vass_ , woman, are you ever going to let that go?” he mutters.  
  
“No!”  
  
“Well—good,” he snorts. “I suppose I deserve it.”  
  
“Fenris,” Hawke states, pretending to suddenly be very serious.  
  
“Hawke,” he echoes, equally somber.  
  
“When are you going to take your sodding pants off?”  
  
He barks out a short laugh. “I don’t know. Perhaps when I feel you’ve earned it?”  
  
“Will I earn it if I stay the night?”  
  
“Oh, you’re staying the night regardless,” he answers easily as he gets up to close the window. He pauses in front of it as the smells filter in.

Fenris can smell snow. He has never seen it, to his memory, and in his time in the Free Marches he’s seen freezing rain, slush, and stinging sleet, but never snow. It smells like ice, but...different. Softer and blunter. Like ice without the sharpness. Like enchantment, without the evil. Like good things and magic.

“Yes, Master.” He hears the mischief in Hawke’s voice behind him.

He is a master. Of himself and in this room. He is a king here. And there, naked on his bed and simmering with a sly smile, is his reason for ruling.

He leaves the window open as a cold blank slate starts to drift down, dusting the world outside white. It brings stillness and quiet. 

“On your hands and knees, Hawke,” Fenris says.


End file.
